A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 3 : $b Diseases of the respiratory, circulatory, and hæmatopoietic systems
Science
A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 3 : $b Diseases of the respiratory, circulatory, and hæmatopoietic systems
Medicine -- Practice
In tuberculosis, laryngitis is a frequent occurrence. In most cases it
is secondary to the pulmonary affection, and due to the direct
influence of the contagious sputum--according to Heinze, however, not
to contagion, but to the influence of the infected blood. In other
cases it appears to develop spontaneously, before any pulmonary
affection is diagnosticated, and may then be due to some poison
circulating in either blood or lymph. Tubercular laryngitis, according
to Rindfleisch, commences in the excretory ducts of the muciparous
glands. That this is so in a great many cases is undoubted. The first
changes visible are small cellular subepithelial infiltrations or real
subepithelial tubercles, which, while growing, undergo gaseous
degenerations and ulcerate. These ulcerations are either flat and small
or deeper with an infiltrated edge, and are apt to terminate in
secondary nodulated infiltrations and abscesses. Large tumors are not
met with, but oedema and phlegmonous inflammations are by no means
rare.
ETIOLOGY.--The predisposition varies according to individuals, ages,
and seasons. Some mucous membranes appear to be more sensitive than
others. The hereditary transmission of peculiarities of structure of
all or some tissues or organs is apparent, in the case of laryngitis,
in the fact that many children in the same family or the children of
parents who were sufferers themselves are affected. Children are more
liable than adults, infants more than children: 20 per cent. of all the
cases are met with under a year, 25 from the first to the second, 15
from the second to the third. Not many occur after the twelfth year.
The narrowness of the infant larynx and the looseness of its mucous
membrane afford full play to injurious influences, such as dust, cold
and moist air, changing temperatures, hot vapors and beverages. Colds,
though their nature and effects can hardly be said to be understood,
are certainly amongst the main causes. Perspiring surfaces afford
frequent opportunities. One of the principal causes is insufficient
clothing--more amongst the well-to-do than amongst the poor. The latter
have this blessing in their misfortune, that they are protected
uniformly if at all, and have their skins hardened by exposure. The
bare necks and chests, the exposed knees, the low stockings and thin
shoes of the children of the rich, old and young, are just as many
inlets of laryngeal catarrh, inflammatory disease, and phthisis.
Persons suffering from nasal catarrh or pharyngeal catarrh are liable
to have laryngitis. Thus, not only rachitis, with its influence on
lymphatic glands and the neighboring mucous membranes, but also acute
infectious diseases, such as whooping cough, measles, influenza,
erysipelas, hay fever, tuberculosis, syphilis, typhoid fever, and
variola, are as many causes of laryngitis. That over-exertion of the
voice should produce laryngitis seems probable, but experience does not
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